Study and become proficient with a variety of closing techniques, or decision-making questions. A closing technique can be defined as a question that gets the prospect to commit to an action of some kind, or to comment one way or another on your product. For example you can ask simple questions that tell you how well you’re doing, which give you feedback from the prospect.
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Ask questions such as the following:
#1. “Does this make sense to you so far?”
#2 “Do you have any questions or concerns that I haven’t covered?”
#3 “Do you like what I am showing you so far?”
#4 “Is this the sort of thing you are looking for?”
Invite Him to Buy
If it appears that the prospect likes what you have shown him, and is interested in what you are selling, you can use the invitational close and ask,
“Well, if you like it, why don’t you give it a try?”
You can use the directive close, which says, “Well then, if you have no further questions, the next step is….” and you go on and explain the plan of action, and wrap up the sale.
It is amazing how much time you can save in your sales career if you just muster up the courage to invite people to make a decision on your offering.
In follow-up interviews with prospects, it is amazing how many of them have said that they would have bought if the salesperson had just asked them, or invited them to buy.
It is sad that so many sales are lost every single day because the salesperson did not ask for the order. Developing a habit of asking for the order in a polite, courteous and carefully pre-planned way is a tremendous technique for improving your efficiency and productivity.
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Eliminating the Time Wasters in Selling
There are several time wasters in selling. Based on interviews with thousands of sales people and sales managers, here are the ten major reasons why people waste their time and fail to realize their full potential for sales and income.
1. Procrastination
Procrastination is the thief of time. It is usually accompanied by delaying tactics, or finding all kinds of excuses for not getting out and getting going.
Usually, procrastination is caused by a deep fear of rejection, or fear of failure. This is often called “call reluctance.”
This kind of fear, of rejection and disapproval, which leads to procrastination and delay, can only be overcome by confronting it everyday until it goes away. The most remarkable thing about your fears is that, if you face them squarely, they diminish. But if you back away from them, or avoid the situation that you fear, your fears grow until they paralyze all productive action.
When I started selling, I was terrified of cold calling and prospecting. But then I learned something that changed my career. I learned that, “rejection is not personal.” If a person says that they are not interested in what you are selling, it is not aimed at you personally. It is merely an automatic response to a commercial offer in a competitive society. The person does not know you well enough to reject you personally. Rejection is not personal.
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Once I learned that, I began calling on people, both door-to-door and office-to-office, and by telephone. All my fears of rejection disappeared.
Eventually, I reached a point where the negative reaction to my sales activities had no affect on me at all. This must be your goal as well.
2. Incompletion of the Sale
Incomplete sales that require callbacks are a major time waster. These usually occur when the salesperson does not have everything he needs to make the sale. Sometimes, because of poor preparation, sales people do not have the proper price lists, the proper brochures, the correct inventory figures or the necessary information to conclude the sale.
Sometimes the salesperson lacks the ability to answer objections, or to ask for the order. Making a sales call on a qualified prospect and then not being ready to conclude the sale is a tremendous waste of time. Often when you call back on the prospect again, he or she has lost all interest.
3. Poor Preparation
Poor preparation is usually visible when there are obvious inaccuracies and deficiencies in the presentation. Proper preparation prior to a sales call requires that you learn as much about the prospect as possible before you meet with him or her. There is nothing quite so insulting to a prospect when a salesperson tries to sell them something without knowing anything about him.
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4. Ignorance
A salesperson usually demonstrates his or her ignorance with a lack of product knowledge. The salesperson has obviously not take the time to study the sales literature to thoroughly understand the product or service that he or she is trying to sell.
When the customer has questions about the product or service, the salesperson stumbles or bluffs or tries to make up an answer. This not only undermines the credibility of the salesperson and the company, but it shakes the confidence of the salesperson as well.
Know What You Are Selling
Some years ago, my wife and I went out looking for an expensive home in San Diego. We contacted several realtors to view homes for sale.
Having been a real estate agent and broker at one time, I know a lot about buying and selling real estate. As we would drive up to a house that was for sale for several hundred thousand dollars, I would ask the agent a series of questions about the house. I was always amazed to find out that very few of the realtors had even taken the time to read the MLS sheets to get the details on the house. Many of them had never been to the open houses on the homes they were showing for sale. They were attempting to sell a product where they would be earning several thousand dollars in commissions, and they often had no idea of the size of the house, or any of its amenities. They had 321
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not earned the right to offer the product for sale because they had not taken the time to fully understand the product in the first place.
5. Unconfirmed Appointments
Unconfirmed appointments lead to the situation where the salesperson arrives for an appointment that was made by phone and finds that the prospect is gone.
The salesperson has now wasted the time he spent in prospecting, the time of preparation and the time of travel. Why does this happen so often? The main reason is because of the fear of rejection. The salesperson is reluctant to phone and confirm the appointment for fear that the prospect will cancel it.
Here is a very simple method that has been effective for me and many other sales people over the years. You call the office of the prospect before you leave. You ask the receptionist if the prospect is in. If the receptionist says
“Yes,” then you say, “Thank you very much. Please tell him that this is Brian Tracy calling, and that I will be there for my appointment on schedule.” You then hang up the phone.
In this way you remind the prospect that you are coming and you put the prospect under a sense of obligation to see you when you arrive. You stop wasting your time by going out to unconfirmed appointments.
6. Poor Planning of Calls Geographically
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One of the biggest time wasters in selling is traveling all over your sales territory, spending most of your time in traffic, rather than face to face with people who can and will buy within a reasonable period of time.
One simple way to cluster your calls geographically is to divide your territory into four parts. Discipline yourself to work in one quadrant of your territory each day or half day. If you call to make an appointment, tell the prospect that you will be visiting customers in his area at a specific time of the week. Would he be available to see you at that time?
It is interesting to note that, the more structured and scheduled your time usage is as a salesperson, the more you are respected by your prospects and customers. The more that they feel that you have a tight schedule, the more they will adjust their schedule to accommodate meeting with you.
7. Needless Perfectionism
Perfectionism occurs when you insist that everything be perfectly in order before you go out and sell. It is another form of indecisiveness, and it is closely tied up with call reluctance. It is caused by fear of rejection and fear of failure.
Whenever you find yourself studying and over-studying your materials, insisting that everything be exactly right before you pick up the phone, or before you make a call, you must have the honesty to realize that is fear that you are dealing with.